Labour Party

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LABOUR PARTY

The Labour Party came into existence on 27 February 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), an alliance of trade unions and socialist organizations—the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and the Fabian Society. It resolved to work as an independent group in Parliament, distinct from the Liberals. Its growth was spectacular and within twenty-four years it had formed its first government, although it was a minority one, and had replaced the Liberal Party as the progressive party of British politics.

alliance

The Labour Party had emerged from the political and economic conditions of the 1880s and 1890s, which had seen the emergence of socialist groups and most obviously the ILP, which had been formed as a national organization in Bradford in January 1893. Although organizations such as the SDF and the Socialist League had worked with trade unions in the early years of their existence, it was the ILP, perhaps more than other socialist organizations, that favored and developed the trade union alliance. The ILP was dominated by leaders who had been, or were, active trade unionists. James Keir Hardie (1856–1915) had been a miner and Tom Mann (1856–1941), an early member, was a skilled engineer who focused his efforts on organizing general trade unionism among the unskilled and semi-skilled workers.

Hardie, who became member of Parliament (MP) for West Ham South in 1892, was a keen advocate of the "Labour Alliance" between trade unionist and socialists. Once he and twenty-seven other ILP candidates were defeated in their parliamentary candidatures during the general election of 1895 he resolved to create that alliance just as much as he rejected the idea of socialist unity with the SDF. As a result of his pressure, and that of socialist trade unionists, the Trades Union Congress, the representative body of British trade unionism, discussed the resolution to hold a joint conference at its TUC meeting at Doncaster in 1899. The motion was passed, the meeting was held in London on 27 February 1900, and an executive of twelve trade unionists and six socialists was formed, although it was soon amended to seven and five, respectively. It was the trade unions that dominated this organization and it became a party demanding purely political independence for the working classes. It did not attach itself to the idea of a class war nor, indeed, to socialism until 1918.

At first the LRC was a small and relatively limited organization, with forty-one trade unions affiliated to it and 353,700 members led by James Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937), a young socialist from Scotland, who became its secretary. Indeed, during its early years it was effectively run from MacDonald's flat at 3 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London. Immediately faced with a general election, it stood fifteen candidates who gained just short of sixty-three thousand votes and secured the return of Hardie, for Merthyr Tydfil, and Richard Bell, of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, for Derby. This was rather disappointing reward for its efforts, but the fortunes of the LRC soon changed when, in September 1900, the High Court ruled that the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) was liable to pay the company costs of its dispute with the Taff Vale Railway Company in South Wales. Although this decision was turned over on appeal it was, in July 1901, upheld again by the House of Lords. This cost the ASRS £23,000 in January 1903. This action, and other industrial disputes, encouraged trade unions to affiliate to the LRC, since it was clear that they needed political power to overthrow the economic judgment. By February 1902 it had 455,000 members, and its membership increased quickly thereafter. Also at this time, MacDonald organized a number of secret meetings with the Liberals and concluded the secret Lib-Lab (Gladstone-MacDonald) pact in 1903, whereby the Liberals and LRC agreed to allow the other a free run against the Conservatives in about thirty seats each. Soon afterward, Will Crook and Arthur Henderson (1863–1935) both won parliamentary by-elections. The LRC was growing fast.

The LRC's big breakthrough, however, occurred in the January and February 1906 general election, when twenty-nine LRC candidates, soon to be increased to thirty, won their parliamentary contests. Of these, twenty-three were trade unionists and eighteen described themselves as active socialists. Shortly afterward the LRC changed its name to the Labour Party.

Although it associated with the new Liberal government, the Labour Party initiated a number of its own campaigns, the most obvious being the "Right to Work" campaign of 1907 and 1908. Yet that campaign and others failed, and frustrations at the perceived failings of the Parliamentary Labour Party (its MPs in Parliament) developed, even though the liability of trade unions to pay the employer's costs in strikes, the Taff Vale Judgement, was removed in 1906. Indeed, the Labour Party's slow development led Ben Tillett (1860–1943) in 1908 to produce his critical pamphlet Is the Parliamentary Labour Party a Failure?

party growth

Despite this frustration, the trade union movement began to join the Labour Party in ever greater numbers. The half a million members of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain affiliated on 1 January 1909. Yet many trade unionists whose union joined the Labour Party were Liberals and Tories and objected to the trade unions paying a political levy to the Labour Party. The railwayman W. V. Osborne made such an objection in 1909 and the House of Lords concurred that the enforced payment of a political levy was illegal. This seriously damaged the Labour Party finances. Shortly afterward Labour was faced with contesting two general elections in 1910, as a result of the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George's attempt to get his Liberal budget measures forced through the House of Lords. Labour returned a mere forty MPs in the January general election and forty-two MPs in 1910, which, given its progress among the unions, represented something of a failure.

Nevertheless, Labour Party fortunes began to improve. MacDonald gave up his role as secretary, to Arthur Henderson (1863–1935), and assumed the responsibility of chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party bringing to that position his charisma, oratorical powers, and, above all, immense organizational skills. Under his leadership regional Labour Party organizations were set up, and two national agents were appointed. In addition, legislation in 1911 gave MPs an income of £400 a year, thus reducing the burden on Labour Party finances, and the Trade Union Act of 1913 confirmed that trade unions could not automatically pay funds into the Labour Party coffers but did allow trade unions to do so subject to the approval of a ballot from which individuals could "contract out" if they so wished. The Labour Party also prospered with the growth of trade unionism after 1910, and its affiliated trade union membership rose from about 1.2 million in 1910 to 1.86 million in 1912, before falling to about 1.5 million in 1914, as a result of the "contracting out" clause. In other words, by 1914 its affiliated membership amounted to just under 60 percent of the 2.7 million members affiliated to the Trades Union Congress, and about 40 percent of the trade unionists in the country.

In the years immediately before World War I (1914–1918) the Labour Party was being challenged on all sides in its claim to be the party of the working classes. The Liberals hoped to revive their claims to that title as the Liberal governments pressed forward with social reforms, including old-age pensions and national insurance to deal with unemployment and ill-health. Indeed, some historians, such as P. F. Clarke, have maintained that the Liberal Party was successful in attracting the working classes to their cause. However, other historians have maintained that the Labour Party was progressing and that from about 1909 onward was winning municipal and local election results more readily than its parliamentary successes would suggest, largely because more working-class voters had a municipal or local vote than held the parliamentary franchise.

On the eve of World War I the Labour Party was also faced by challenges from within the labor movements. Marxist groups came together to form the British Socialist Party in 1911–1912, guild socialism emerged, and industrial syndicalist groups emerged under the leadership of Tom Mann and played a part in the strikes and industrial unrest of prewar years. However, none of them seriously challenged the authority of the Labour Party to act as the legitimate representative of the British working classes. In the final analysis the Labour Party was clearly the representative body of working-class opinion in Britain and even the efforts of the Liberal Party to reexert its influence were faltering on the eve of the Great War.

See alsoGreat Britain; Socialism; Working Class.